ROCKFORD — Sixty-some years ago, Ira Allen Eichner discovered that surplus equipment from World War II and the Korean War was cheap and plentiful. He started selling military radios from the trunk of his car to an emerging commercial airline industry.

He got good at it, too. He incorporated in 1955 and in the 1960s lent his middle name to his growing business. It became known as Allen Aircraft Radio.

The name eventually was shortened to AAR Corp., a corporate acronym that’s soon to become synonymous with hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in payroll at Chicago Rockford International Airport.

AAR and airport officials are to announce a deal Monday to bring a long-sought jet maintenance, repair and overhaul operation — known in the industry as an MRO — to the airport. It is expected to open during the first quarter of 2016 and employ 500 people within two years.

AAR will occupy a $40 million facility to be built near Falcon Road on the airport’s east side.

The airport, city of Rockford and Winnebago County will share half of the cost. The state and federal governments will pay for the other half in a deal that will bring the Wood Dale-based company to the airport on a seven-year lease with options to renew.

AAR is the nation’s largest MRO operator. Rockford will become its seventh MRO.

The MRO business is a growing part of a company with 2013 revenues of $2.14 billion and 6,300 employees in 17 countries.

Not bad for a company launched with a couple of hundred bucks by a college kid who found a lucrative niche and ran with it.

His successor and son-in-law, David Storch, found and exploited a lucrative niche, too.

Storch was 27 and recently married when he proposed to Eichner that AAR go after the market for refurbishing aircraft engine parts and selling them to commercial airlines. AAR seeded the venture with $100,000, according to a profile published last year by the Chicago Tribune. By the end of the 1980s, the division had sales of $100 million to airlines that wanted quality parts that cost less than those sold by major manufacturers.

Storch, 61, leads a major company. But entrepreneurship and risk taking remain a part of AAR corporate culture.

“I tell my people: ‘Don’t wait for me.’ If you wait for me, we limit our ability to grow this company,” Storch told the Tribune. “If you’re right 100 percent of the time, it means you’re not taking enough risks. Calculate the odds and make a decision, and I’ll stand by you.”

Page 2 of 2 - The company, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol AIR, is taking a risk on Rockford. But the corporate odds of success improved considerably when Rock Valley College decided to expand its aviation maintenance program. The college expects to send 150 certified aviation mechanics into the workforce annually, feeding AAR and other companies that need qualified workers.

A member survey in 2012 by the Aeronautical Repair Station Association found worker shortages tie for second with high fuel prices as the most serious threat to the aviation maintenance industry.

“Everybody in blue-collar industry is struggling for those workers,” said Sarah MacLeod, executive director of the repair association. “It’s not just aviation.”

Retirements and the loss of graduates to the energy, power and automotive industries were cited as issues affecting MROs. Having a school with a built-in pipeline to an MRO is expected to be an advantage.

“This is why that RVC component is so important, said Mike Dunn, executive director of Chicago Rockford International Airport, who said he had worked on the AAR deal every day since he was hired to run the airport in January 2012.

Rockford is the third MRO expansion announcement by AAR in three years,

Last year, AAR acquired assets of Aeroframe Services at Chennault International Airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana. AAR said it would retain 250 Aeroframe employees and add 500 more people to its payroll. The airport is building a $21 million, 112,000-square-foot hangar at the airport to service wide-body jets such as Boeing 747s and Airbus A380s. AAR will lease the hangar.

In 2012, AAR established an MRO in Duluth, Minnesota. It moved into hangar space vacated after Northwest Airlines stopped servicing its own jets and shut down the 152,000-square-foot facility in 2005. In May, AAR announced a deal with Air Canada to service the company’s 89 Airbus A320 narrow-body jets. With the contract, AAR expected to employ 375 employees in Duluth, its northernmost facility.